If you find yourself describing your spouse as "easy going", consider yourself fortunate. After all, study after study has shown that if your spouse is not easy going, but rather is high in the personality trait known as Neuroticism, then you are more likely to be unhappily married [1, 2].

The personality traits of your spouse also matter when it comes to whether you two will stay together. Researchers have estimated that 25% of the variance in divorce risk can be attributable to the personality traits of the spouses [3]. More specifically, people high in Neuroticism tend to divorce at relatively high rates [1, 2].

The danger of Neuroticism for a marriage shouldn't be too surprising when you reflect on what this trait is. It's a combination of being high on angry hostility, vulnerability, self-consciousness, irritability, depression, and anxiety. Leading personality researchers Paul Costa and Robert McCrae [4] have described people high in Neuroticism as being "prone to having irrational ideas, being less able to control their impulses, and as coping more poorly than others with stress” (p. 14). You can just imagine how miserable it would be to marry someone like that!

What's interesting is that researchers have only recently been able to put their finger on why having a partner who is high on Neuroticism tends to break up a marriage. Fisher and McNulty followed 72 newlyweds over the first year of marriage [5]. They found that the Neuroticism of both partners measured just after the wedding predicted a decline in both sexual and overall marital satisfaction one year later. Most important, this decline in sexual satisfaction could account for, and thus explain, the drop in marital satisfaction that was linked to Neuroticism. The researchers concluded that Neuroticism causes marital dissatisfaction through harming the marital sex life. This makes sense, doesn't it? After all, who would want to have sex with a moody, irritable spouse?

 References 

1. Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. N. (1995). The longitudinal course of marital quality and stability: A review of theory, method, and research. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 3–34.

2. Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. N. (1997). Neuroticism, marital interaction, and the trajectory of marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1075–1092.

3. Jockin, V., McGue, M., & Lykken, D. T. (1996). Personality and divorce: A genetic analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 288–299.

4. Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PIR): Professional Manual. Lutz, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc.

5. Fisher, T. D., & McNulty, J. K. (2008). Neuroticism and marital satisfaction: The mediating role played by the sexual relationship, Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 112-122.

Insight

What Psychologists Know that You Don’t
Anita E. Kelly Ph.D.

Anita E. Kelly, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. She is author of The Clever Student and The Psychology of Secrets.

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